Ed Romanoff’s new album, The Orphan King, is a gem. From the first verse of the opening track, “Mrs. Warby’s Ghost,” you feel like you’re in good hands. He’s a great storyteller and the record just feels relaxed and un-rushed. You can hear John Prine’s influence on Romanoff, who seems to sing with a smile, delivering winking, comical lyrics with equal commitment to lines that’ll have you misting up. The title track stems from Romanoff’s discovery that his father was not his biological father; the refrain “I still believe in love,” is indicative of his outlook and the thread that ties this album together for me–that no matter how broken we are, we can become “a little less broken,” and, eventually, healed. And it’ll be love that gets us there.

RLR: There seems to be a thread of resilience on this album–the protagonists are working through challenge or loneliness or loss, but also seem to be looking ahead, and the song “Orphan King” really anchors that feeling. Can you talk about this group of songs in conversation with each other?

ER: I love that that’s your take on it, and I think you’re dead on. My own experience is so weird, to be a middle-aged guy, thinking about writing songs, taking classes, linking up with a high-cred national writer, happening to take a DNA test, learning that your family’s not what you thought it was, and everything blew up. So, you know, in 2010, 2012, I was a wreck. My identity was shot, my father, who was my closest friend, it turns out wasn’t my father. There was nobody still alive for me to ask, so it sent me into this lost zone.

On the other side of that, recovering and getting footing back, and starting to do these songs, it was interesting. I guess it’s my nature, that I actually do believe in love. When I was writing all those songs, they all turned into love songs about people that are fringe folks and being hopeful. I guess that was in my own heart and had to come out, but I explored it through everyone else’s eyes. It was really a fun thing to do.

For each of these songs, I didn’t really know how they were going to turn out. “Elephant Man” was starting out as this dark thing, and then he meets this other strange person; and he might be a little delusional, but he’s hopeful, and I think that’s the only way to navigate this world we’re in, and to consider it possible that you could be happy. And the crazy thing for me is that actually happened. You know, through writing, which I wasn’t doing, and this sort of reinvention process, I was at a writing retreat and I met somebody. And we’re getting married. And I feel so lucky with the person I’ve found.

Growing up, I did not know that I was a bastard child, I did not know that I was a problem. I felt it, and I knew that I was better off if I didn’t say anything. It was so strange, my mother played the piano and my brother played the drums, but I wasn’t allowed to get a guitar or sing.

RLR: I read about that in a different interview you gave; and you assume that you weren’t allowed to play music because your biological father was a musician?

ER: It is an assumption; it’s a dot that I’m connecting, but I don’t know. But the thing is, secrets are so bad in families, and kids are so intuitive, so you pick up on something. But there was a notion that I should keep quiet; so I stayed pretty quiet. But to put yourself out there and to start playing songs and to have this record and to work with a guy like Simone Felice…when I wrote to him about this record and everything that was happening, he wrote back and said, “The Orphan King shall be heard!” And that kind of sums it up: everybody has a little story and it would be awesome if people could hear it.

RLR: As you were talking about people on the fringe, and feeling separated from others, it made me think that most people feel that way, they’re just good at acting like they don’t.

ER: Isn’t that interesting? I heard somebody once say: “Everybody has a limp.” And the amount of energy it takes to project otherwise is exhausting. If we could all at the same time just agree to let it go, that would be really cool.

RLR: You said in an interview that Simone rejected “Elephant Man” initially and you reworked it. What were the most significant changes that made it work and what’s that process like with him as a producer?

ER: My thing is always to find what sounds the best, and I really respect any listener, so if someone’s going to take the time to listen to it, I want to put the time in to get it right. It had a different feel, it was a little more jangly, and I don’t think the writing was as good; I was too close to it. But Simone is like an NHL goalie, every time I’d try to get something through, he was like, “No!” and blocked it. So the things that did get through were good ones.

Pauline wasn’t in the song at that point, so there were a lot of new additions, and I wrote him, saying the Elephant Man is going to make a come back. I worked on the song with Crit Harmon, who has produced Lori McKenna and Martin Sexton. He’s a very inspired guy; he paces a lot and then goes, “What about this?” He’s a really good writer, so it was great to bounce things off of him.

ER: Writers get to the end result, but they’re especially good at taking leaves and erasing their footsteps behind them, so it seems like magic. Like that Mark Twain book where he actually put out his drafts–it’s a long road to get to the final thing. I think co-writing is really cool, that collaborative effort, putting two minds together, and you get something better. A great editor will do that too; it’s amazing how just pulling a couple words out makes something so much better. When you’re just yourself, you can get so close to it that you can’t even see some obvious choices, but when a really smart person that you trust says, “Hey how about this?” you’re willing to try it. One of Simone’s really cool phrases was he would “audition” ideas, so it wasn’t this huge attachment to it, but sometimes you would audition an idea and feel its resonance.

RLR: That’s a very cool way of framing it, and gives you a certain permission to try things out and take risks without feeling like it’s the road you’re going down.

ER: I’m sure you’ve seen folks where there’s a resistance to that. But everyone that was involved in this, there was a real open-mindedness, where all ideas could be tried out. And you mentioned the cast of characters, and that was another thing from Simone, because he was able to pick up the phone; he called Larry [Campbell], and watching those guys do what they do was really cool. And I felt like I was in the car; I may not have been driving, but they were like, “Yeah, you can ride with us for a while.”

RLR: Was there anything that stands out to you as an important approach or practice that you learned working with these folks?

ER: Simone has this thing of allowing something to roll down hill and gather momentum. Larry is just so accomplished; he has done 20,000 hours and is so deeply accomplished that when a thing comes in, he kind of just knows. Everyone kind of turned to him. We would do a take and everyone would ask him, “Was that it?” and he’d say, “No.” It was so funny because it’s like one word always. “Larry, you want some coffee?” “Yeah.” “How do you want it?” “Black.” Always one word: “Cool.”

But he was so good, and what I was particularly amazed by was when he was doing fiddle parts and he would lay down a thing and he would go back and would play harmony to himself on one pass–so he was doing two notes on the fiddle, harmonizing with himself, composing the next bit while he was doing that, then laying another bit over it that matched perfectly. That’s just from another galaxy.

There was one amazing moment with him on “The Ballad of Willie Sutton.” It was Simone’s idea to make it kind of dirty, with big drums. And then Larry did this one pass, where we were all in the studio, just like, “Holy shit,” watching. We were all having that Magnavox chair experience; and he did this pass and when he finished he said, “OK, I got it now,” because it wasn’t good enough for him. And the next one he did, we ended up using and it was just magical.

RLR: The last two tracks are very political in nature and I’m wondering about that tension in writing songs that are very much about this moment, but especially now when the news cycle moves so fast and you need the songs to last beyond a fleeting moment in time.

ER: It felt like a risk. After the election, I almost canceled recording, because I just didn’t have the heart. It was heartbreaking when it happened. And I became fearful and it’s so hard to be creative when you’re just worried. I called Simone to cancel and he said “No. Make some art.”

I came up with this notion of what would Leonard Cohen do? And that helped me take the negative protagonist point of view, you know, that unreliable narrator–I thought of him as a mad king, a different kind of king than the orphan king.  

RLR: I’m stealing a question from Joe Pug: if you have a day, or time, set aside to write, what does that look like?

ER: Being up in Woodstock is optimal. In the morning, I like being kind of clear headed, and then going for a walk. And if you have a thing on the guitar, bounce over to the piano, and make a mistake, and then sometimes the mistake is kind of cool. Then read something, then come back to it. Sort of in and out of it is the ideal.

RLR: What are you reading?

ER: Right now? Murakami – Kafka On The Shore.

RLR: So you don’t go away from writing and read twitter?

ER: Well, have you done the thing where you can see how much time you’re spending on certain apps? When I saw how much time I was spending on twitter, I deleted it.

RLR: Reading some interviews with you, it seems like you had to work on confidence as a singer. It’s surprising to me, because your voice is great and true, but can you talk about what you had to do to gain that confidence?

ER: I didn’t think I could sing, I thought I was tone deaf because my father was, so I felt like I was just squawking away. I went and saw this guy Bill Reilly, the voice coach who works with a lot of people. And I was in his studio and seriously the FedEx guy is coming through and all these people are coming in, and I’m looking at pictures of Pavarotti and Celine Dion, and I’m kind of shrinking by the second. He would say, “Sing this note,” and “sing that note,” and I was really being quiet. He asked me, “Why are you singing so low?” and I said “I’m afraid somebody might hear it.” And he just looked at me, like, dude that’s the point. As I was leaving, he said, “You’ve got to give yourself permission to sing.”

You know what I find interesting? If someone is singing someone else’s song, they tend to really dig in. When you’re covering a song, you think, “Well that’s John Prine, so it’s gotta be good,” and you sing it all out. So part of it is trying to remove any doubt about it. And I think I’m on the second step of the whole process. I’m really interested in people that get more out of a word. Even Dylan in such a subtle way, he’ll hang on a word and just add impact to it. In recording, it’s usually one of the first two passes and they have mistakes, but there’s usually a certain charm to them. And others can be more technically right but doesn’t feel that great, so it’s a balance of how to get there.

You can get more information about Ed and the new album at his website. This album will keep you good company this spring, so pick it up!

Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez